The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

Each Stroke of the Quill

It was late, or perhaps early, depending how you looked at it. Everyone had gone - either home or else to bed... Or at least to sleep, as was the case with Sirius Black, who lay sprawled on the couch in his black-and-white diamond print spandex unitard, the fake mustache he had conjured up flapping over his mouth as he snored loudly.

The kitchen was the place where any one of them could be found at any odd hour going over things that kept them up at night - be that homework, casework, or ancient runes.

Lily was bent over a pad of paper, biting her lip in concentration, copying each rune carefully. She was doing it first in pencil, not yet ready to ink her work. When she'd copied a full line of them, she paused and looked over the key Remus had created for her, and then turning back to the original in Professor Laurie's books, before turning back to her own.

In the very beginning, before anything else had ever been, there was love.

Lily stared at the words, feeling somehow underwhelmed and yet accomplished at the same time. A full sentence - written out in runic text, and, just below, in English. It was a triumph - however small. She smiled, and reached for the purple feathered quill that Professor Laurie had given to her. She looked it over, inspecting it, then opened her ink pot, dipped the metal tip, and brought the quill down onto the page.

The moment the tip touched the parchment a rush of emotions came over her, as heavy and steady as a waterfall coming over a very high cliff. She gasped and dropped the quill as the emotions resonated and she panted, her heart racing a thousand miles. She felt as though she'd been sling-shotted 'round the moon in a matter of seconds and was reminded rather forcibly of a time when she'd sat side-by-side with Petunia in the front cart of a roller coaster at Walt Disney World when her family had gone to Florida on vacation one summer.

"Tuney, are you frightened?" she had squealed with excitement, grabbing onto her sister's arm as the carts had crawled up-up-up toward the sky in a seeming never-ending rise to the very pinnacle of the atmosphere.

"I don't know what we're on this thing at all!" Tuney had wailed, though not in an angry way, more in anticipation.

It was the one bonding moment they'd had on the trip. Everything else had made Tuney cranky and full of complaints. It was too hot, the air conditioner was too cold, the food wasn't as good as she expected, the lines were too long... blah, blah, blah. But they'd gotten on the roller coaster and somehow the thought of what goes up must come down had erased all of that, done away with all their history, and Lily and Petunia were just two sisters, sitting on a ride, about to go flying down toward the earth at unthinkable speeds.

"I love you Petunia!" Lily had cried, pretending to say her last goodbyes in a gesture of pure dramatic fantasy.

"I love you Lily!" Petunia had cried back.

It was the last time Petunia had ever said those words to her.

Lily felt a jerk behind her naval, as though she'd been disapparated to the memory and now she was back - back in the kitchen, back in the flat in East London, back in the present.

She stared at the quill in her hand, her mouth dry, tears running down her cheeks.

There was a sound at the door and she looked up. Sirius stood there, leaning against the frame, one leg of the spandex unitard had ridden up to his knee and the opposite shoulder slouched down to his elbow. His hair was a mess, his eyes bleary. "Where'd everyone go?" he asked.

Lily cleared her thoat. "Oh, um. Um they left. After the party. It's the middle of the night, love."

Sirius blinked sleepily. "It is?"